fighting those terrorists is a diversion from the war on terror. You hear all that and you can understand why somebody would make a face." Before an adoring crowd, with a few days' reaction time and the help of a good speechwriter, Bush proved to be an electrifyingly clever debater. But, just when he was scoring his best points in Wilkes-Barre, he started making things up. During the Coral Gables debate, Kerry had been asked about his attitude toward preëmptive war-the main in- gredient of the "Bush doctrine," which also advocates unilateralism. "No Presi- dent, through all of American history; has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preëmpt in any way necessary to protect the United States of Amer- ica," Kerry said. "But if and when you do it you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people under- stand fiilly why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons." By "global test," Kerry obviously meant not so much a formal procedure as an attitude-the spirit expressed by the Founding Fathers when they drafted the Declaration of Independence with "a de- cent respect to the opinions of mankind." Bush, however, seized on the phrase as an ideal target for ridicule and distor- tion. He called it "the Kerry doctrine" (in Wilkes-Barre, he even pretended that Kerry had called it that), and he made it out to mean a system of subjugating Americàs war-making authority to for- eigners-the opposite of what Kerry had said. "Under this test, America wowd not be able to act quickly against threats, be- cause we're sitting around waiting for our grade from other nations and other lead- ers," Bush said mockingly; and went on, "This mind-set will paralyze America in a dangerous world. . . . The Senator would have America bend over back- wards to satisfy a handful of govern- ments with agendas different from our own. This is my opponent's alliance- building strategy: brush off your best friends, fawn over your critics. And that is no way to gain the respect of the world." Even with the fabrications and the misrepresentations, there was no deny- ing that, with barely four weeks until Election Day; America was engaged, at last, in the sort of vigorous national de- 110 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 18, 2004 bate that one might imagine to be the whole point of a Presidential-campaign season. Yet so much is left unsaid. In Iraq, there are only bad options-exit or escalate. And Kerry and Bush agreed in Coral Gables that Iraq is not even our greatest problem. Nuclear proliferation is, and partictÙarly the possibility of loose nukes falling into the hands of terrorists. Of course, Bush credits the war in Iraq with sending a message to rogue prolif- erators: You could be next. By way of example, he cites Libya, whose leader, Muammar Qgddafi, he says, undertook to "disarm" his nuclear-weapons pro- gram shortly after marines toppled the statue of Saddam in Baghdad. (In fact, the equipment for Qgddafi's reactor was still in crates, unassembled, and he had been negotiating the trade-in for a long time, without any reference to Saddam.) In the meantime, Iran and North Korea, Iraq's original partners in Bush's "axis of evil," have heard the President's message differently; and have advanced their nu- clear programs significantly since the American takeover of Baghdad; the North Korean state news agency has cited Iraq as an example of what can happen to countries that can't defend themselves with nukes. For Bush, to say that the world is not as he describes it is to give solace to our enemies, undermine our forces on the field of battle, and endanger the lives of the citizeI1f)T. Even as the Duelfer report made it clear that Saddam Hussein had posed no threat to America, had no ca- pacity to produce a threat, and had noth- ing to give to others to threaten us with, Bush stood on the stump in Wilkes- Barre scolding Kerry for saying the very same thing. "The problem with this ap- proach is obvious," the President pro- claimed. "If America waits until a threat is at our doorstep, it might be too late." Kerry is offering himself as the candidate of change-truth vs. unreality; a fresh start vs. more of the same. We need friends in this dangerous world, he says, and we need diplomacy to try and disarm and contain our enemies lest it should be our burden, otherwise, to destroy them. 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